Derek Turnbull 1926-2006

The Runner and the Land

Two years after Jack Foster, another New Zealand legend of masters running has died: Derek Turnbull, the down-to-earth sheep farmer who rewrote the world record book for his age groups from 1977 to 1991. He was 79 and still competing vigorously, in track, road and trail running, cycling, and sheep shearing, having recovered from the setback of a stroke in 2001. He died in his sleep on November 2.

The laconic farmer first emerged from his beloved 260 acres of rolling sheep paddocks at Tussock Creek, Southland, in 1977, when he won the gold medal for 50-plus 1500 meters at the world masters championships in Gothenburg, Sweden. He had always been an enthusiastic runner — his wife Pat tells how after their early dates at local dances he used to change into running shoes and run back to meet her for a "hot and sweaty goodnight cuddle."

"I wasn’t any good when I was younger," Turnbull always said, with his usual modesty. On the grass running tracks of rural New Zealand, he went close to two minutes for 880 yards, had a one mile PR of 4:23, and gained several fourth places in New Zealand three- and six-miles championships. The secret of his later greatness was that he took so long to slow down. At 62 he ran 2:14.53 for 800, 4:28.00 for 1500, and 34:30 for 10,000. At 65, he ran a mile in 4:56.04, and 10,000 in 34:42.2.

He amassed 25 world age group records and 28 world masters gold medals, amazing totals for a distance runner. Statistician Al Sheahan says, "All his records are at or close to 100 percent in the age-graded scales."

Two marathons earned Turnbull lasting and global fame. In 1987, at age 61, he ran 2:38.46 at Adelaide, Australia, and then surpassed even that at London in 1992, running the epoch-making time of 2:41.57 at age 65. That was one of eight world records in his miracle year of 1992.

Now he was the iconic "fastest old man in the world," the celebrity ageless farmer-athlete, featured in a video and subject of a biography. Overseas journalists found their way to Tussock Creek. Paparazzi struggled over fences with sheep droppings on their loafers. Magazine articles waxed rhapsodic about Derek’s ability to spend his days heaving ewes into pens and then head out for a hard two-hour run in the "bush" (native forest). Derek remained as homespun and unpretentious as ever. His training ideas were as simple as growing grass. "I don’t know about this aerobic business," he would say. "I don’t train. I just run — when I feel, where I feel, how I feel."

A visit to Sherwood Farm revealed that running how Derek felt in fact produced a perfectly balanced program of long runs, tempo, and fast work. "Feel like rattlin’ yer dags to that corner?" he’d say casually, and take off across the roots and hillocks, lengthening his flexuous stride to sub-70 second 400 speed. ("Dags" are the long tangles of wool behind an unshorn sheep, stiff with dried droppings, which clatter together as the sheep runs.) To see Derek in his battered check shirt, driving his even more battered truck ahead of a work gang of yelping border collies, forking hay, manhandling ewes, fixing fences, milking cows, was to understand that when he went loping off into the hills, that other life as a star runner also grew at some deep level from those fertile green pastures.

His greatest pride was not his championship medals, but his and Pat’s six children (son Guy now runs the farm), their long-term friendships with fellow runners like Americans Kelsey and Doris Brown, and the 85 acres of indigenous forest on their land that they gifted as a protected area. "Turnbull Reserve" is open now to all visitors, including runners. It will outlast Derek Turnbull’s world records, which is as he wanted.